Gonna trade in your laptop for a phone?

CNET's News.com reported a few months ago that a lot of businesspeople are trading in their laptops for a smart phone. Now it's reporting that a start-up company is putting phone and computer functionality into one smallish device that the company plans to sell staring in March.

That device seems a holy grail for the business traveler, especially if you can move the data freely among devices--to your laptop or desktop computer or some other networked device--in a standardized way. Many is the time I've brought my wireless keyboard and PalmPilot or a Treo, rather than lugging along an entire computer, though I have a small and light one that I bring on longer trips.

The new device, being called a cPC, also plugs into a screen, the News.com story says. Eventually, I suppose, someone will figure out how to make a commercially viable small device with a virtual keyboard and a way to view the info as if on a big computer screen, say, through special glasses or some type of miniprojector. Then your smart device could be miniaturized to the size of a thumbdrive.